Category: Crazy

Seen in the NY Post

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/statuses/470585196212137984

First of all, read this article. It’s not only fascinating, it’s a great example of web journalism. Second of all, it’s crazy absurd. It starts:

In the summer of 2010, a young black man was stopped and questioned by police on the streets of Miami Gardens, Florida. According to the report filled out by the officer, he was “wearing gray sweatpants, a red hoodie and black gloves” giving the police “just cause” to question him. In the report, he was labeled a “suspicious person.”

He was an 11-year-old boy on his way to football practice.

I’ve read about Miami Gardens before because there’s one guy who’s been arrested 71 times for trespassing. Where he works. And leaving the store was even worse (there’s a cool graphic showing arrests by distance from work).

To the point where the employer let him live in a room in the back of the store because leaving the store was too risky. So the police tried to arrest him in his “bedroom” (the owner intervenes).

This should be comical, except I’m not making this up. This is happening in America.

Who are we?

I grew up in Milwaukee, so this is no surprise to me, but via Flowing Data, below is a map showing the bar to grocery store ratio. Green means more grocery stores, brown means more bars.

The big brown area is basically Wisconsin.